


Iste Locus Mundi Silvestri

by coinageFission



Category: Super Science Friends (Cartoon)
Genre: Mild Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21582136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coinageFission/pseuds/coinageFission
Summary: Set somewhere in Episode 5, before the animals start disappearing. What if the Pope had been forewarned not to proceed with his plan?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Iste Locus Mundi Silvestri

It's the sound that awakens him from what should have been a restful slumber -- a soft, insistent rattling, like the clattering of dice. Normally this wouldn't have been such a problem, and he could perhaps chalk it up to staff or cardinals indulging in such trivial frivolities as a 'game night'. But tonight something is different, something is off. There is no sound of chattering, of talking and laughing, of clinking glasses and other background noise that usually accompanies late night group activities.

It's an almost unnatural, unnerving silence really. And still that soft, insistent clatter makes itself heard.

His Holiness gets to his feet in a sleep-dazed stupor, crossing his room to open the door and peer out into the adjoining hallway for any sign of the interloper making such a racket. "Who's there?" Pius' voice is oddly loud in his own ears in the face of this dead-of-night silence, and out of the corner of his eye he could swear he'd seen the outline of a man disappear around the corner. "Who's that? What are you doing here? Come back here you--"

Perhaps it is beneath the dignity of a pope to give chase to an intruder, but Pius does so regardless, darting after this mysterious stranger without a second thought. Is this some sort of trick? Perhaps the doing of one of those fiendish scientists, rendered invisible through some diabolical invention? Have his plans to prove them wrong about evolution been outed ahead of schedule?

Whoever is behind this is certainly one step ahead of him in more ways than one, always seen out of the corner of his eyes, disappearing down another corner or stairwell, out a door or down a side street. If anybody happens upon the incongruity of the Pope running through the streets in his sleepwear, nobody seems to comment on it.

And still that godforsaken racket continues, even now! Even above the noise of the Roman streets, even while he pursues this unknown assailant, that incessant rattling seems to echo around in his head like an idea that refuses to go away, like knucklebones jostling around his skull! When the noise finally dissipates into the silence, Pius finds himself alone in the darkness of his own cathedral, seemingly led by his quarry to a marble monument just off the main aisle.

The instant he lays eyes on it, the Pope narrows his eyes in displeasure and disbelief. This must be some sort of cruel joke, surely.

The polished relief of one of his predecessors gifting a crown with crooked cross to a kneeling envoy is an immediate giveaway of this tomb's occupant, and the first line of text engraved on the marble slab beneath only confirms this as the final resting place of one of the more legendary popes of times past.

_\+ ISTE LOCVS MVNDI SILVESTRI MEMBRA SEPVLTI · VENTVRO DOMINO CONFERET AD SONITVM ·_

Gerbert d'Aurillac, later known as Pope Sylvester II, was not a pope Pius particularly liked. Very rarely could one have said that a scholar dared sit on the Chair of Saint Peter, and Gerbert was one such man. It was he who had learned from the Muslims in Spain the secrets of arithmetic with nine digits, who later began to spread this knowledge to his students before he had become pope. It was he who introduced the counting board to the West, who revived the use of the armillary sphere to model the heavens and their relation to the earth. It was he who allegedly invented the balance wheel used to regulate clocks, and who was said to have built an organ driven by steam when he was still Archbishop of Rheims.

He was the closest thing to a scientist the papacy had ever had up to that point -- and Pius utterly, completely _detested_ him for it.

Later accounts had accused him of necromancy, of dark magic, of bargaining with the devil to obtain his lofty office and his great knowledge. They said that Sylvester had a magical bronze head that could answer any question asked of it, that he had once stolen a book of spells from an Arab wizard, that he had died after saying Mass in a church built on soil from the Holy Land.

And they also said that his bones would rattle in their grave whenever the incumbent pope was soon to die.

Pope Pius swallowed hard as the realization hit him. Could it be a sign from above? Dare he back away from his ambitions to overturn the scandalous teachings of the scientists? The moment of doubt passed and he shook his head in stubborn determination, clenching his fist as he glowered at the sober lines of writing engraved on the marble epitaph. Sylvester's tomb had not held bones for centuries -- an examination of his body a couple hundred years ago had disintegrated it into dust. There was nothing to make a sound, nothing to fear. This had to be a long, elaborate trick, surely it was.

No sooner had he come to this conclusion than the rattling started up anew, louder and more pronounced this time. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, it made his palms clammy with sweat and his heart race with terror. Slowly, against his better judgment, he crept forward, and pressed his ear against the cool stone.

Now Pius could hear through the marble more clearly the unmistakable sound of clacking, clattering bone, a chattering sound akin to the laughing of a skull without windpipe or vocal cords to laugh with. As the Pope listened on with abject horror, that chattering grew and grew in intensity until it well and truly seemed the hysterical laughing of one long dead, and then it began to taper off slowly, gradually, until it was one prolonged rattle -- the morbid sound of a man's last breath.

Sylvester, it seemed, had had the last laugh.


End file.
